A Montreal, Canada, caller says that when he does something annoying, his wife will say simply, “Can you not?” He wonders if that construction is grammatically correct. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Can You Not...
Tor from Vermont asks about makes no never mind to me, a phrase he heard after moving as a teenager from New Jersey to the Northeast Kingdom. It means roughly “I don’t care” or “it makes no difference to me,” with nevermind behaving like a noun. The...
Why does the prefix in- sometimes make a synonym rather than an antonym? In the case of invaluable, the prefix is still a negation, since it suggests that something’s value is incalculable. Michael Quinion‘s website affixes.org shows how...
A California caller is puzzled as to why the prefix un- seems to function in two entirely different ways in the terms undone and unmarried. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Conflicting Meanings of Prefix...